IMO it really is up to you and your playstyle which option is "better." If you're collecting just to have them (i.e. you're trying to get the safari achieves), I would pick up as many of the pets as I could first and worry about rarity/breed later. If you're hoping to have an all rare, or all uncommon and up, or all "optimized" breed set up, then you may want to spend the extra time getting better quality pets.

From my own experience, I would collect with rarity and breed in mind. When I first started I was just picking up everything I could find, regardless of quality. And because of that I ended up having to double back through all the areas I'd been through already and recollecting a lot for rarity and breed. It felt like more work having to do that.

When WoD came out, I was a lot more prepared. While I did pick up poorer quality pets just to mark off the safari achieve I also stayed in areas far longer to pick up rares and specific breeds, releasing the poorer quality versions as I went.

There is no reason to wait for an uncommon for capture, as only rare matters.

There are 4 different ways to capture pets:1: Capture one of any rarity and use a stone to make it rare. This is, if you don't care about breed, and just want it, ASAP.2: Capture the first rare you see. This is, if you don't care about breed, but want to save stones.3: Capture the first pet, of your chosen breed, regardless of rarity. You care about breed, but have enough cash/stones to want it ASAP.4: Wait until you find a rare of the correct breed. You want a specific breed and are not willing to spend a stone/cash to make it rare.

Poor, common, uncommon are all pretty useless for battle, but all of them just require a single stone to become blue, so in reality, they are all equal.

Personally, I'm a mix of 1 and 2.. I go for rares, without caring for breed, but if it takes too long (e.g. the rare ones like Giraffe Calf, Unborn Val'kyr, Minfernal etc), I just capture one and stone it..

I just like to have the best possible of each pet, even while searching for a rare. So, if the first one I see is "poor" quality I'll capture it. If I then come across an "uncommon" or one with a better breed I catch that and release the first. Find a rare, catch that, release the uncommon, etc. Just personal preference, but this way if I have to abandon the pet hunt early, at least I have something captured.

Graven wrote:I just like to have the best possible of each pet, even while searching for a rare. So, if the first one I see is "poor" quality I'll capture it. If I then come across an "uncommon" or one with a better breed I catch that and release the first. Find a rare, catch that, release the uncommon, etc. Just personal preference, but this way if I have to abandon the pet hunt early, at least I have something captured.

There are not that many wild pets which are used regularly with a certain breed to defeat trainers etc. Search through the forums and find which wild pets those are and make a point of capturing the specific breed for that pet. Otherwise, if you are just collecting wild pets I would capture the first rare pet of each type and move on.I know stones are easy to come by now but there are still a good number of pets which you cannot get as a rare breed so concentrate your stones on those to start with.

I tend to capture the first of the right breed I'm looking for, regardless of rarity, and then either upgrade it if I have trouble farming for more or "upgrade/release" it when I find a rarer quality of the same breed I can exchange for it. Rarity/leveling items seem to be becoming more common as the game progresses, but there's still no way to change the breed of a pet.

Waflob wrote:For me, stones are no longer an issue.They used to be hard to get, but now they cost 15 tokens and you get minimum 8 tokens per level 100 char per day from the garrison daily quest.

As Waflob says. But also you don't mention if you plan to level them all too. I leveled in bulk in Kun Lai and found since the last patch that stones dropped from normal pve pet battles at an astonishing rate. Mainly beast ones in that zone, but others too. So grab everything you can get, and go leveling as fast as you can and you'll soon have them all blue.

Here's the way I looked at it. The more pets you have, the more achievements you will most likely get, and lots of those come with rewards that may be rare pets themselves. In my journeys collecting all of the wild pets in the game, I would always capture the first one I spotted. This is imperative on PVP servers, especially if you are fighting and trying to capture some rare pet that you have been searching ages for.

Then, after capturing the first you come across, continue looking around for maybe 5 minutes max in the area where those pets spawn and search for an uncommon or a rare. If you don't find one, move on to the next pet you need. Lots of times, you may find that uncommon or a rare as a second or third pet in a battle versus a completely different pet when you aren't even looking for it any more. Just continue doing this over and over and eventually you will have a, well, menagerie of uncommon and rares, without even much effort.

After you have captured all the wild pets in your game, make it your mission to, say, complete a zone every day by capturing all rares in a zone that you are missing, and doing so one zone per day. Setting goals for yourself will help you eventually turn all of those Uncommon and below into Rares. It's doable, trust me. Sometimes it can be very, very frustrating. I remember I spent 2 hours straight about a week ago trying to find a rare turkey in Twilight Highlands and HAD to have gone through 50+ of them when finally a rare shows up as a secondary when I battle a Highlands Skunk. I almost jumped out of my chair over a standard, non-special rare, lol, but it was the last one I needed for Twilight Highlands.

Oh, and due to the relative fact that Flawless Battle-Stones are more fairly "common" now (you know what I mean), don't be afraid to use one on that Minfernal, Shadow Sporebat, Unborn Val'kyr (which I personally think is overratted , etc.

I hope this helps, maybe even only a little bit. If not, oh well, I tried. Good luck!

1- Get any form of new pet2- Get chosen breed of new pet in any rarity3- Get rare of chosen breed

I use a lot of specific breeds of pets, and as such, that's what I've been doing since I started collecting. However, the hard to find pets have simply been step 1 above. Stones are saved for those annoying to get ones!